


In Waking Sleep

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Character Studies (Dragon Age) [9]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Clan Lavellan - Freeform, Dalish, Death, Elves, Gen, Grief, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 09:46:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3973426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inquisitor Lavellan returns home.  It is time to pay her respects to the fallen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Waking Sleep

She stands amidst burned aravels, against shattered bows and splintered arrows, against the skulls of elves and halla.  The halla would never abandon the People.  Every child knows that and yet it makes her chest hurt, seeing it now; they did not run, though they could have.  And the People, they did not run, either.  The bones are not scattered far and wide, but instead cluster in the center of the clearing, where the stories were told, the old songs sung.

She did not mean to take so long to come home.

But then again, she reminds herself, home is always moving to a Dalish.  Home is always hearth and halla, fire that can be gathered up and resumed under different trees, a different sky.  She has made a new home far away, and she moves through dust and desert, through muck and mire, over hill and stone.  She is a clan of one.

 _Home is where the People are_ , she remembers, and their bones lie at her feet.

The grass is soft beneath her toes, growing gently as it does round femurs and phalanges.  Was this one the Keeper?  Were these her parents?  Was that her favorite halla with the cloudy eye?  

Blood pounds in her veins, hot and insistent.  She could find out, she knows.  She has only to reach for the silver dagger at her back, the mage’s last resort.  The Veil is so _thin_ here.  She could speak to a hundred clamoring demons all crowding for a piece of her heart.   _Rage.  Fear.  Despair._   She has only to feed them with her blood, her heartbeat, her sorrow, and they will come; they will name those who have fallen, they will strive to find their killers, they will do what she commands.

Until they consume her, and she is left even more hollow than she is now.

Her fingers hesitate on the silver dagger, and she lets her hand fall to her side.  Her blood forgets its turmoil.  No.  She will not give in.

Instead she tries to sing.  Her voice is rusted, cracking through layers of choked-back misery.  She fumbles on the words.  

_Hahren na melana sahlin_

_Emma ir abelas_

_Souver’inan isala hamin_

_Vhenan him dor’felas_

_In uthenera na revas_

_Vir sulahn’nehn_

_Vir dirthera_

_Vir samahl la numin_

_Vir lath sa’vunin_

She swallows, mouths  _In waking sleep, is freedom_  once more.  She wishes she believed it.

She looks down at the rucksack she has brought with her.  She kneels beside it, opens it.  The small brown nuts spill out onto the dust and grass at her feet.  She traveled the Dales for weeks, even months, for these.  She collected them alone, saving only the best for this journey.

She stays in the clearing until dusk falls, until a fallow moon rises high above her.  Her back aches.  Her eyes sting.  Her hands are stiff with dirt and loam.  She slowly limps back to a camp with a crackling fire, sees her lover waiting to greet her with worried eyes.  She is grateful that right now, she is not alone.

The empty rucksack dangles from her hands as she collapses to her knees in the firelight, and behind her in the shadows she knows someday the trees will grow.  And they will leaf rich and green and real, and they will drink in the sunlight, and their branches will dance in summer's zephyrs.  

But today Clan Lavellan lies beneath the soil, lost in waking sleep; and when she at last throws her arms around her lover, not even the soft voice in her ear or the gentle hands in her hair can keep her tears at bay. 

**Author's Note:**

> I purposely left the love interest ambiguous so that you could imagine anyone you like comforting Lavellan. :( I teared up multiple times writing this, augh!
> 
> The song is from the Dragon Age wiki, and translated reads:
> 
> elder your time is come  
> now I am filled with sorrow  
> weary eyes need resting  
> heart has become grey and slow  
> in waking sleep is freedom
> 
> we sing, rejoice  
> we tell the tale  
> we laugh and cry  
> we love one more day


End file.
